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While addressing Westerners at the embassy on November 18, 1956, in the presence of Polish Communist statesman Władysław Gomułka, Khrushchev said: "About the capitalist states, it doesn't depend on you whether or not we exist. If you don't like us, don't accept our invitations, and don't invite us to come to see you. Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!"[5] The rant prompted the envoys from twelve NATO nations and Israel to leave the room.[5]

In his subsequent public speech Khrushchev declared: "[...] We must take a shovel and dig a deep grave, and bury colonialism as deep as we can".[6] In a 1961 speech at the Institute of Marxism–Leninism in Moscow, Khrushchev said, that "peaceful coexistence" for the Soviet Union means "intense, economic, political and ideological struggle between the proletariat and the aggressive forces of imperialism in the world arena".[7] Later, on August 24, 1963, Khrushchev remarked in his speech in Yugoslavia, "I once said, 'We will bury you,' and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you,"[8] a reference[citation needed] to the Marxist saying, "The proletariat is the undertaker of capitalism", based on the concluding statement in Chapter 1 of the Communist Manifesto: "What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable." Khrushchev also expressed this Marxist thesis at a meeting with journalists in the United States in September 1959. Many Americans interpreted the quote as a nuclear threat.[9]

Some authors suggest that an alternative translation is "We shall be present at your funeral" or "We shall outlive you".[10][11][12] Authors have suggested the phrase, in conjunction with Khrushchev's overhead hand clasp gesture meant that Russia would take care of the funeral arrangements for capitalism after its demise.[13]

Khrushchev was known for his emotional public image. His daughter admitted that "he was known for strong language, interrupting speakers, banging his fists on the table in protest, pounding his feet, even whistling".[7] She called such behavior a "manner, which suited his goal... to be different from the hypocrites of the West, with their appropriate words but calculated deeds".[7]Mikhail Gorbachev suggested in his book Perestroika and New Thinking for our Country and the World that the image used by Khrushchev was inspired by the acute discussions among Soviet agrarian scientists in the 1930s, nicknamed "who will bury whom", the bitterness of which must be understood in the political context of the times.

Khrushchev's phrase was used as the title of Jan Šejna's book on communist Cold War strategies and of a comics book. The phrase also appears in Sting's song "Russians". It provided the title to a 1962 documentary We'll Bury You released by Columbia Pictures. The quote, paraphrased as "We will bury them!", was used as a taunt in the video game Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2,[14] in which the Soviet Union wages World War III against the Western Allies.